I believe, more than anything else perhaps, in personal responsibility. This is the great driver of my ecofacts, the passion that makes me pursue them, and of my own internal combustion engine – me. This issue is so far reaching and yet so personal, it is difficult for me to essentialize. Attempt number one:
A friend sent me a piece this morning that I subsequently found has been floating around for a while. It is called “the green thing”, and begins with an encounter between an older shopper and young clerk who accuses the older generation of being a source of the current environmental problems. The older one then recounts the myriad ways in which people used to live that were in fact so much greener – drying clothes on the line, owning one small tv instead of many large ones, returning bottles to the store for refilling, driving much less, etc. The missing point in the blog was the skipped generation, the one far more guilty of the waste that had quickly become part and parcel of modern lifestyles, and without any consciousness thereof. Convenience, cheap energy, more stuff, and profits trumped everything else, towards greater and greater disposability, and less energy needed of the human type, while using far more of the other kinds – especially fossil fuels – to produce this effect.
We may be finally turning a corner, but life has been too busy for people to be concerned with every single thing they buy, and they were not meant to be. We have trusted the makers of our things, and the marketers of our culture. We have trusted that these things must be safe if they are being sold, and that if we’re told to buy things, we should. And we’ll be better off for having them. We have been complacent. But maybe even more so, the producers have been. For a long time we didn’t know that most chemicals were untested and unregulated. That they were routinely spewed from plants into nearby rivers. That plastics remain for hundreds of years and leach unhealthy things into our soils and water. Until recent history, people knew the sources of their things, and these were of their world.
The pendulum is swinging back. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) means manufacturers becoming truly responsible for the life cycles and impacts of their products.Take back programs, environmental economics, triple bottom line, sustainable business practices, c2c ( cradle to cradle) are concepts that are beginning to take hold. But the status quo remains, for the most part. So, in the meantime, somehow we must be more responsible for what we buy, and then where it goes. Or at least I must be.
Nonsense. Econutz always believe they are the only ones capable of guarding he earth from the great uneducated masses. If you truly believed in personal responsibility, you would allow people to choose their own contributions to your cause rather than resorting to authoritarian bans and taxes.
You’re missing the point, as usual, El Smurfo, and have reacted with predictable hyperbole.
It doesn’t take an “Econut” to realise that, left to their own devices, people (whether educated or uneducated) will do stupid, stupid things, and that people need governance, rules and laws. The libertarian utopia (“hey, let’s let everyone do whatever they want, whenever they want, without interference!”) is idiotic, for the simple reason that the actions that each person takes has an effect on others.
Interesting that every single person who describes themselves as libertarian chooses to live in and be a part of the very society they choose to excoriate as being overly restrictive, don’t you think?
People are not rational actors. Laws, regulations, and environmental rules are just some of the ways that we try to correct irrational actions for the common good. Seems to make sense to me.
The younger generations always think they were the first to invent anything. The cultural dividing line regarding disposable consumerism most likely will be traced back to the introduction of television to the masses; the effects of this cultural shift have not yet been assessed.
Thrift within the immediate family circle was replaced with opulent consumption once we saw other people’s lives, not knowing or even understanding the driving force of early TV Land was consumer enticement to generate increased advertising dollars.
TV took new generations daily, hourly into the world of make-believe, well beyond the Saturday matinee when the lights went down and you knew you were on a magic carpet. TV started the disturbing trend to replace real life with fake life. Hence noted with great irony, this current fake trend to get back to real.
One can only hope the piousness of this current trend is replaced with humility for what was real that had been intentionally misplaced; not re-invented by today’s more virtuous generation who in face are quite irritating.
The death of the last person who knew life beforeTV will be one more cultural loss. The oral history of those pre-TV memories needs recording. And good for granny for taking that young whippersnapper to task for his misplaced blame.
We grew up saving water from the tap waiting for the water to get hot. We saved it in the glass milk bottles that separated the cream from the milk, from with we made our own butter and drank the remaining skim milk before we knew it was better for us. Balls of string from scraps, washed aluminum foil for re-use, home made clothes and self-catered wedding receptions were normal. Small appliances got repaired; not thrown out. One car that Dad used during the day. Bikes were public transportation. Walking to school meant getting up earlier.
Thank a granny, instead of throwing her under the bus.
Think about it for a second smurf. Without the “bans” we’ve had in place in the last couple of decades having to do with dangerous chemicals and pollution, we’d certainly be far worse off.
Regulation and personal responsibility are good bedfellows.
Does that apply to responsibly used plastic grocery bags as well, or is there a slippery slope we haven’t discussed here
The yuppie (aka permanent scolds) craze for SUVs left me permanently befuddled.